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2022 was a busy year and I was lucky enough to finish it off with a conversation with Aprill Allen.
Aprill is the COO and co-founder of Tractor Ventures, an initiative focused on providing technology start-ups from Australia and New Zealand with non-dilutive strategic funding in order to foster their growth.
Along with her business and life partner, Matt Allen, Aprill boasts an investment portfolio of over 50 companies and provides her process improvement expertise to the companies supported by Tractor ventures.
Fridays OffStepping out of the confines of her bio, Aprill tells us how she met her husband Matt while working for the Australian telecommunications company One.Tel in the late 90’s. She would eventually leave the company to become a solo consultant before joining Tractor full time.
Tractor has a “Fridays off” policy which Aprill uses to work on her art studio and can often be found painting on Fridays in between enjoying her weekend with her husband and two teenage sons.
Not having gone through any graduation in the field of technology beyond a computing certificate from the Computer Power Training Institute, which landed her the position in One.Tel from which she’d build the rest of her expertise through experience.
She also points out how much of what she’s learned from her current line of work came from absorbing the information that she was able to catch from observing her husband’s work as a start-up builder.
Aprill’s story is just another trail blazer open to divert from the beaten path of high school-> college -> career along with so many that we have seen on the podcast thus far. It bears repeating that there are many ways to educate a professional. College is just one of them.
Tractor VenturesSo, what’s with Tractor Ventures and “non-dilutive” funding solutions for tech businesses?
Aprill explains:
“We help tech founders who traditionally aren’t super attracted to venture capital, they may not have the same aspirations, they still have ambition but don’t necessarily want to go at that rocketship pace.”
And this is the centre of tractor ventures' entire identity, most ventures try to be rocketships, they tend to be very expensive to build and tend to involve a lot of risks. Sure, there might be a big pay off if they stick to landing, but they also explode just as often.
Now tractors have the distinct advantage of being cheaper, simpler, and easier to fix, a farmer can rely safely on his tractor with the certainty that it will in all likelihood, never explode.
What tractor ventures does is support “tractor” businesses with revenue-based finance within a non-dilutive model, that is a loan that goes back to the fund through a top line share of the monthly revenue.
Tractor Ventures still supports their tech companies with everything they need, much like angel investors would, not only about their gross charges, but also with useful connections through the Tractor Ventures “village” where founders can get in touch and cooperate.
The Story thus farThe story of tractor ventures goes back to the year of 2012 when Zero did their dual listing on an IPO on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges which paved the way for Aprill and her husband to start a self-made superfund.
Since then Aprill has advised some of the most successful vanguard companies out there, with Flowork being a worthy mention on her part, along Mr.Yum and GoTerra, helping entrepreneurs manage talents at their disposal within the company.
As Aprill told me of all the companies she has worked with, I couldn’t help but notice a glitter of excitement in her eyes when talking about how these businesses have grown, this kind of passion that is quite common amongst angel investors.
Angel Investing: Facts and MythThe first fact about angel investing is that it tends to be very high risk, and for...
2022 was a busy year and I was lucky enough to finish it off with a conversation with Aprill Allen.
Aprill is the COO and co-founder of Tractor Ventures, an initiative focused on providing technology start-ups from Australia and New Zealand with non-dilutive strategic funding in order to foster their growth.
Along with her business and life partner, Matt Allen, Aprill boasts an investment portfolio of over 50 companies and provides her process improvement expertise to the companies supported by Tractor ventures.
Fridays OffStepping out of the confines of her bio, Aprill tells us how she met her husband Matt while working for the Australian telecommunications company One.Tel in the late 90’s. She would eventually leave the company to become a solo consultant before joining Tractor full time.
Tractor has a “Fridays off” policy which Aprill uses to work on her art studio and can often be found painting on Fridays in between enjoying her weekend with her husband and two teenage sons.
Not having gone through any graduation in the field of technology beyond a computing certificate from the Computer Power Training Institute, which landed her the position in One.Tel from which she’d build the rest of her expertise through experience.
She also points out how much of what she’s learned from her current line of work came from absorbing the information that she was able to catch from observing her husband’s work as a start-up builder.
Aprill’s story is just another trail blazer open to divert from the beaten path of high school-> college -> career along with so many that we have seen on the podcast thus far. It bears repeating that there are many ways to educate a professional. College is just one of them.
Tractor VenturesSo, what’s with Tractor Ventures and “non-dilutive” funding solutions for tech businesses?
Aprill explains:
“We help tech founders who traditionally aren’t super attracted to venture capital, they may not have the same aspirations, they still have ambition but don’t necessarily want to go at that rocketship pace.”
And this is the centre of tractor ventures' entire identity, most ventures try to be rocketships, they tend to be very expensive to build and tend to involve a lot of risks. Sure, there might be a big pay off if they stick to landing, but they also explode just as often.
Now tractors have the distinct advantage of being cheaper, simpler, and easier to fix, a farmer can rely safely on his tractor with the certainty that it will in all likelihood, never explode.
What tractor ventures does is support “tractor” businesses with revenue-based finance within a non-dilutive model, that is a loan that goes back to the fund through a top line share of the monthly revenue.
Tractor Ventures still supports their tech companies with everything they need, much like angel investors would, not only about their gross charges, but also with useful connections through the Tractor Ventures “village” where founders can get in touch and cooperate.
The Story thus farThe story of tractor ventures goes back to the year of 2012 when Zero did their dual listing on an IPO on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges which paved the way for Aprill and her husband to start a self-made superfund.
Since then Aprill has advised some of the most successful vanguard companies out there, with Flowork being a worthy mention on her part, along Mr.Yum and GoTerra, helping entrepreneurs manage talents at their disposal within the company.
As Aprill told me of all the companies she has worked with, I couldn’t help but notice a glitter of excitement in her eyes when talking about how these businesses have grown, this kind of passion that is quite common amongst angel investors.
Angel Investing: Facts and MythThe first fact about angel investing is that it tends to be very high risk, and for...